What this state needs is a good trail run.

We have lots of road races, and we have lots of hiking trails. Well, we don’t really have enough hiking trails. Still, we have the Appalachian Trail, Baxter State Park, Acadia, the Camden Hills, the Bigelow Preserve, the White Mountain National Forest, and other fine hiking venues.

But unlike most of the other New England states, and especially unlike out West, we don’t have that delightful, challenging combination of road race and trail hike, the trail run. Why?

“I keep asking that question, too,” says Craig Wilson, 47, of Kittery, one of the handful of trail runners in Maine.

Craig, a bearded house-husband who runs a marathon distance every weekend just to stay in shape, has the typical trail runner’s idea of fun. For example, his most memorable trail run, he says, was Tennessee’s Barkley Marathon, where there are “very indistinct trails if any at all,” the race director simply “laughs at you if you get lost,” and there’s about 10,000 feet of climb for each 20 miles of the race.

Craig did the 60-mile “fun run.” Only one person, in 10 years of attempts, has completed the full 100-mile distance.

“Could it be as simple as that we’ve never started a tradition?” Craig comments on Maine’s lack of trail runs. “We certainly have the terrain for it.”

Trail runs vary from coast to coast. There’s the Vermont 100-Mile Endurance Run, in which Craig Wilson once finished sixth out of approximately 250 entrants; California’s notorious, grueling Western States 100-Miler across the Sierra Nevada; and the short but mountainous 7.1-mile Dipsea north of San Francisco, the oldest and most famous trail run in the country (86th running this year, 1,250 entrants).

Whatever the distance, all these runs have in common a true off-road experience, be it climbing above-timberline rock fields or brushing through overgrown woods roads. Most involve ultra distances, generally multiples of the marathon, with 100 miles being for the distance with the most status.

It is odd that, given Maine’s geography and reputation for ruggedness, flat, wimpy states like Massachusetts are much more advanced in trail running. The only run in Maine listed in the trail-running calenders is September’s Bar Harbor Half Marathon, which is partly on Acadia National Park’s carriage roads. But, as beautiful as this race is (one of the best in Maine for scenery), the graveled smoothness of the carriage roads just doesn’t qualify as truly off-road.

Craig Wilson, who is also one of Maine’s premier ultra (very long distance) runners, thinks that, in order not to scare Maine people away from the idea, any trail run organized ought to start small, perhaps a 10-kilometer loop that could be repeated to add distance.

But my suggestion is to think big and try to attract people from all over the country and abroad. Some of us in the running community should get together with people in the tourist-promotion business and organize a 50- or 100-miler (“the Maineiac 100-miler”?) over some of our state’s most picturesque and difficult terrain. We could shoot for the inaugural race during the summer or early fall of 1997.

Maine Running & Fitness is willing to be a sponsor, but more affluent sponsors would also have to be lined up. Compared to many sports, the expense of organizing something like this would not be great, but it would take careful planning and quite a few volunteers to staff food and water stops, checkpoints, etc.

Where to hold it? I suggest we form a committee and have a competition, asking chambers of commerce to submit reasons why the race ought to be in their domain and what kind of sponsorship and other support could be provided. A properly promoted event puts the host community on an international calender.

I can fantasize circuits of the Acadia hiking trails, or Baxter State Park, or a run on the Appalachian Trail and other trails in the Sugarloaf-Bigelow area, or a run out of Bethel through challenging Mahoosuc Notch. I can even envision a 50-mile run from Augusta to the Camden Hills (and back,if we wanted to make it a 100-miler). Some of these locations would require permission from public officials; some would require private landowners’ permission. Hiking purists might object to a race on hiking trails, especially on the Appalachian Trail. I consider myself a hiking purist, but I see no reason why one day’s use of some public hiking trails for a race would be a problem.

If anyone is interested in helping get a trail run established, please give me a call at 626-3298 or write me at 7 Elm Street, Augusta 04330.

Lance Tapley is publisher and editor of Maine Running & Fitness Magazine.